Leveraging inter-religious dialogue into transformative action using practical theology’s reflexive frameworks (1)
In my mission to develop protocols for assessing Vajrayana Buddhist contemplative practices, I have investigated models of academic practical theology as 
prospective frameworks for systematic reflection incorporating both theological and empirical dimensions. Beyond this Buddhism-specific application, I have explored how practical theology can be used to enhance inter-religious engagement. In this paper, I demonstrate how traditionally Christian academic practical theology hermeneutic formalisms can be generalized to serve as reflexive frameworks for conducting collaborative inter-religious activities. Such frameworks have the potential to enable actual communities of lived religions to leverage sustainable collaboration in areas of mutual interest for the long-term benefit of congregations and our wider society.
Leveraging Inter-religious dialogue into transformative action using practical theology's reflexive frameworks
Sponsored by the Memnosyne Foundation, the Memnosyne Interfaith Scholarship is designed to support a graduate student completing advanced research related to interfaith studies, relations and action. The research will support not merely religious tolerance and dialogue, but real cooperation. The assertion being that in order to live harmoniously in a multi-religious civil society with democratic structures and a secular government, real cooperation is needed. An approach based upon collaborative pragmatism rather than conflicting idealistic principles is needed in order to achieve a peaceful way of life. All religions carry their distinct revelations. Collaborative pragmatism implies not dominating and destroying these diverse revelations, but cooperating in order to compliment and fulfill them in our ever new and changing world.
The scholar was chosen by the Memnosyne Foundation, and through our agreement with the Global Theological Education Program of Perkins School of Theology and the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue. In this four week research-centered program over the summer, the scholar was offered the opportunity to use the facilities of Bridwell Library at the Perkins School of Theology, one of the finest collections of theological and multiple faith resources in the United States.
In addition to the research, Memnosyne will arrange for (two) public lectures or possible panel discussions during the fall for the benefit of the greater SMU community, Dallas-Fort Worth, and the promotion of the Memnosyne Foundation’s Center for Interfaith Inquiry. The lectures or panels will be designed to promote religious cooperation, interfaith relations and action, and how this impacts a community. The Memnosyne scholar provides both a researched paper and, as part of the presentation, provide examples of the validity and power of a society that embraces the power of interfaith relations and action, not just in theory, but in practice.
This year, the scholar was Bhikshuni Lozang, a Buddhist Nun and Contributing Scholar to State of Formation. It is with great pleasure that we feature the work that she composed as a Memnosyne Interfaith Scholar in the article that follows.
Abstract
In my mission to develop protocols for assessing Vajrayana Buddhist contemplative practices, I have investigated models of academic practical theology as prospective frameworks for systematic reflection incorporating both theological and empirical dimensions. Beyond this Buddhism-specific application, I have explored how practical theology can be used to enhance inter-religious engagement. In this paper, I demonstrate how traditionally Christian academic practical theology hermeneutic formalisms can be generalized to serve as reflexive frameworks for conducting collaborative inter-religious activities. Such frameworks have the potential to enable actual communities of lived religions to leverage sustainable collaboration in areas of mutual interest for the long-term benefit of congregations and our wider society.
Introduction and Rationale
Multiple problems, like poverty and violence and their causes, afflict our communities, while our religious communities appear utterly impotent as resourceful antidotes. Perhaps if our religious congregations were able to combine resources and work as coalition partners on problems of mutual interest, this cohesive network would become a significant force for transformative problem-solving.
As an ordained Buddhist clergy, scientist, educator, practitioner, and researcher of traditional formal Vajrayāna Buddhist meditation techniques, I here present a rationale for employing research paradigms from traditional Christian practical theology in the service of inter-religious collaborative activities. Such paradigms are of potential interest to scholars from academic practical theology, contemplative studies, religious and inter-religious studies, Buddhist and other religious clergy and congregations.
Terminology
As a scientist and Buddhist theologian from the Vajrayāna tradition, my use of the phrase “practical theology praxis” is precisely selected: I favor Heitink’s general rendering of “praxis” as “action, activity”1 because of the theological prominence of its Sanskrit rendering, karma, in Buddhism and its philosophical significance indicating the locus of practical dynamic processes by which intentions are transformed into executed results. It is taken more specifically in the practical theological sense given by David Tracy2: “Praxis is correctly understood as the critical relationship between theory and practice whereby each is dialectically influenced and transformed by the other.” For the phrase “practical theology,” I refer precisely to the usage jointly offered by Browning, Fowler, Schweitzer, and van der Ven3: “Practical theology should be understood as an empirically descriptive and critically constructive theory of religious practice,” contributing to “empirical theory building” and “a theology of transformation.”4
Review of Practical Theology Scholarship
The work described herein applies categorical analysis to practical theology. The interpretive approach is pragmatic, selecting those points of the respective literature considered most relevant to my quest to develop a community-based service project for inter-religious engagement, beyond my immediate research assessing the prospects for developing a theoretical praxis framework for investigating Vajrayāna Buddhist meditation intended to inform teachers and students of such meditation. This need is determined pragmatically, from the point of view of this author who is not only a Vajrayāna Buddhist with extensive expertise in Vajrayāna spiritual formation, but also a scientist and initiate practical theologian.
(to be continued)
